In the last several decades, the medical community has expressed increasing dissatisfaction with existing methods of determining the level of trauma being experienced by human and other warm blooded animals during trauma provoking incidents. Practitioners of the medical arts are particularly desirous of having available as a quick, simple, and accurate diagnostic tool, a means for ascertaining the trauma level of a patient under stress so that a proper medicament, in appropriate amounts, can be prescribed.
It has long been known that stimuli to warm blooded animals, such as cellular injury, inflammation, and even pregnancy can cause the animal body to produce various proteins, commonly called the acute phase proteins. One particular type of acute phase protein, known as the c-reactive protein (CRP), has been found to be particularly susceptible to dramatic increases upon the imposition of stimuli to the animal body and much data has been accumulated concerning the presence of this protein in the circulatory system under various conditions of trauma. CRP is thought to be functionally integral with the effecters of the immunologic and inflammatory response systems and during the last several decades its presence has been used to help diagnose the presence and extent of inflammation as well as tissue necrosis.
Experimental research has shown that CRP levels in the animal body intimately follows the course of the acute phase in trauma and monitoring CRP has been used with success to provide a valuable clinical barometer of illness. Thus CRP measurement is considered by many diagnosticians as a refined quantitative alternate and/or supplement to erythrocyte sedimentation rate in diagnostic medicine. Confirmation of the benefits and utility of quantitative measurement of c-reactive protein can be found in: Biology of C-Reactive Protein and the Acute Phase Response, Hospital Practice, June 1982, Dr. Henry Gewurz; C. Reactive Protein and the Plasma Protein Response to Tissue Injury, A. Symposium, VOL. 389, N.Y. Academy of Science, N.Y., 1982, Kushner I. Volanakis et al.; C-Reactive Protein is Protection Against S. pneumoniae Infection in Mice. J. Exp. Med. 154:1703, 1981, C. Mold et al.; and Primary Structure of Human C-Reactive Protein, J. Biol. Chem. 254:489, 1979, E.B. Oliveira et al.
Thus, one object of this invention is to provide a convenient method for monitoring the extent of trauma experienced by an animal body. Another object of the invention is to provide a method to monitor an acute phase protein. Still another object of the invention is to provide new compounds which are useful for monitoring CRP. A further object is to provide new compounds capable of complexing with metal ions. A still further objective is to provide new compounds from which, in a polymer membrane the presence of CRP can be measured by electrochemical change. These and other objects of the invention will become apparent from the following recitation.